by Anne Holt
Hanne had sat herself at the enormous marble desk with lions’ claw legs, and stared at the leather armchair. There was a crocheted antimacassar over the back, covered in dark, congealed blood. She thought she could even discern a faint aroma of iron, but dismissed the notion as fanciful. The seat was stained too.
“What are we actually looking for?”
Håkon’s question was pertinent, but received no response.
“You’re the detective on the case: why did you want to drag me along?”
He still got no answer, but Hanne moved to the window and ran her hands along under the sill.
“Forensics have been over the whole place,” she said at last. “But they were after murder clues, and they may have missed what we’re looking for. I think there have to be papers hidden somewhere. There must be something in this apartment to give an indication of what the man was up to, apart from his legal practice, that is. His bank accounts, or at any rate the ones we’re aware of, have been thoroughly scrutinised. Nothing suspicious at all.”
She carried on feeling the walls as she spoke.
“If our rather flimsy theory is correct, he must have been pretty well off. He wouldn’t have risked keeping documents at his office, because other people would be running in and out all damned day. Unless he had a hiding place elsewhere, there must be something here.”
Håkon followed her example, and ran his fingers over the opposite wall, self-consciously recognising that he hadn’t the slightest idea what a possible secret compartment might feel like. But they went on in silence until they’d duly felt round the entire room. With no result other than sixteen dirty fingertips.
“What about the obvious places?” Håkon wondered, and went over and opened the cupboards in the tasteless bookcase.
There was nothing at all in the first one. The dust on the shelves bore witness to its having been empty for a long time. The next was stuffed full of porn films, neatly arranged by category. Hanne took one out and opened it. It contained what it said it did, according to the enticing promises on the label. She put the film back, and took out the next one.
“Bingo!”
A slip of paper had fallen to the floor. She snatched it up, a neatly folded A4 sheet. At the top, written by hand, was the word “South.” Below it followed a list of numbers, in groups of three with hyphens between them: 2-17-4, 2-19-3, 7-29-32, 9-14-3. And so it went on right down the page.
They stared at it long and hard.
“It must be a code,” Håkon declared, regretting the words as soon as they left his mouth.
“You don’t say,” Hanne replied with a smile, folding the sheet carefully again and placing it in a sealable plastic bag. “We’ll have to try to crack it then,” she said emphatically, and put the bag in the case they’d brought with them.
Peter Strup was an extremely active man. He lived life at a pace which at his age would have made all the doctors’ warning lights flash, if it weren’t for the fact that he kept himself in such impressively good physical shape. He was in court thirty weeks a year. In addition to that he took part in protest meetings, TV programmes, and public debates. He had published three books in the last five years, two about his many exploits, and one pure biography. All of them, published just the right length of time before Christmas, had sold well.
He was in the lift on his way up to Karen Borg’s office. His suit showed good taste, a deep reddish-brown flannel. His socks matched the stripes on his tie. He looked at himself in the huge mirror that covered the whole of one wall of the lift. He drew his fingers through his hair, adjusted his tie, and was annoyed to see a hint of grime around his collar. As the wood-trimmed metal doors slid open and he took a step out into the corridor, a young woman came through the big glass doors embellished with white numerals to reassure him he was on the right floor. She was fair-haired, quite attractive, dressed in a suit that was almost exactly the same colour and material as his own. Seeing him, she stopped in astonishment.
“Peter Strup?”
“Mrs. Borg, I presume,” he said, offering his hand, which she took with only momentary hesitation.
“Are you on your way out?” he asked, rather superfluously.
“Yes, but only to get myself a few things. Come on in,” she replied, turning back.
“Was it me you wanted to see?”
He confirmed that it was, and they went into her office together.
“I’ve come about your client,” he said when he’d sat down in one of the deep armchairs with a little glass table between them.
“I really would be very happy to take him over from you. Have you discussed it with him?”
“Yes. He won’t agree to it. He wants me. Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“No thanks, I don’t want to take up too much of your time,” Peter Strup replied. “Do you have any idea why he’s insisting on having you?”
“No, I don’t, actually,” she said, amazed at how easily she found herself lying to this man. “Perhaps he simply prefers a woman.”
She smiled. He gave a short but charming laugh.
“This isn’t meant to sound insulting,” he asserted, “but with all due respect, are you conversant with criminal law? Are you aware of all the courtroom procedures in criminal trials?”
She bristled angrily as she considered her response. Over the course of the last week she had been teased by her colleagues, bullied by Nils, and reproached by her snobbish mother for having taken on a criminal case. She was fed up with it. And Peter Strup would have to bear the brunt. She slammed her hands down on the desk.
“Quite honestly I’ve had just about enough of everybody pointing out my incompetence. I’ve had eight years’ experience as a lawyer, following on from damn good results when I graduated. With all due respect, if I may use your own words, how challenging will it actually be to defend a man who has admitted to a murder? Won’t it be fairly plain sailing, with a few well-chosen words about his difficult life before the summing up and sentencing?”
It was unusual for her to boast, and she wasn’t normally short-tempered. But it gave her quite a buzz. She could see that Strup was uneasy.
“Of course, I’m sure you can handle it,” he said soothingly, like a benevolent examiner. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
As he went out he turned with a smile and added, “But the offer is still there!”
Having closed the door, Karen rang police headquarters. She eventually got a surly switchboard operator, and asked for Håkon Sand.
“It’s Karen here.”
He was silent, and for a fraction of a second she felt again the weird tingle of excitement that had arisen between them before the weekend, but that she’d almost forgotten about in the meantime. Perhaps because she preferred to.
“What do you know about Peter Strup?”
Her question broke the atmosphere of wariness, and she could hear the surprise in his voice as he answered.
“Peter Strup? One of the most competent defence lawyers in the country, maybe even the best; practising since time immemorial, and a damned nice guy, too! Clever, very well known, and not a skeleton in his cupboard. Married to the same woman for twenty-five years, three successful children, and a modest detached suburban house in Nordstrand. I read the last bit in the tabloids. What about him?”
Karen told her story. She was factual, adding nothing and omitting nothing. When she’d finished, she declared:
“There’s something very fishy about it. He can’t be short of work. And he went to all the trouble of coming to my office! He could have phoned again.”
She sounded almost indignant. Håkon was immersed in his own train of thought, and said nothing.
“Hello?”
He came back to life.
“Yes, I’m still here. No, I can’t explain it. He probably just called in because he was in your neighbourhood.”
“Well, maybe, but then it was strange that he didn’t have a briefcase or documents of any kind with him.�
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Håkon couldn’t help but agree, though he said nothing. Absolutely nothing. But his brain was working so hard that Karen might almost have heard it.
WEDNESDAY 7 OCTOBER
This is a book code. That much is self-evident.”
The elderly man had the confidence of his expertise. He was sitting in the canteen on the sixth floor with Hanne Wilhelmsen and Håkon Sand.
He was good-looking, slim, and remarkably tall for someone of his generation. His hair might have been thinner than it once was, but there was still enough of it to present an imposing grey-white mane, combed back and recently trimmed. He had strongly defined features and a straight North European nose with reading glasses elegantly perched on the tip. He was neatly dressed, in a maroon sweater and stylish blue trousers. His hands were steady as they held the paper, and there was a narrow wedding ring tightly ingrown on the third finger of his right hand.
Gustaf Løvstrand was a retired policeman. His background was in military intelligence during the War and for a few years afterwards, until he turned to a more public-service orientated career in the police force. He was thoroughly dependable, well liked and highly respected by his colleagues before he was transferred to the Special Branch, where he had ended his career as a consultant. He’d had the unalloyed pleasure and satisfaction of seeing all three of his children in police-related jobs. He adored his wife and his roses, enjoyed his retirement, and was ready to assist anybody who regarded him as still having something to contribute.
“It’s easy to see it’s a book code. Take a look at the numbers,” he said, laying the piece of paper flat on the table and pointing at the string of figures:
2-17-4, 2-19-3, 7-29-32, 9-14-3, 12-2-29, 13-11-29, 16-11-2.
“Absurdly simple,” he went on with a smile.
The other two couldn’t really see what he was talking about, and Hanne ventured to confess her ignorance.
“What exactly is a book code, and how is it so self-evident?”
Løvstrand glanced up at her for a moment, and then indicated the top line.
“Three numbers in each group. Page, line, and letter. As you can see, it’s only the first one in each group that has any logical progression. It’s either the same as the preceding first number or higher: 2, 2, 7, 9, 12, 13, 16, and so on. The highest number in the second group is 43, and it’s rare for a book to have more than forty-something lines to a page. Once you identify the book it’s based on, the puzzle should solve itself straight away.”
He could only assume that it must have been devised by amateurs, since book codes were so easy to recognise.
“On the other hand, they’re incredibly difficult to crack,” he declared, “because you have to find the book! And if a prearranged code is used to denote it, you need an awful lot of luck to discover it. When you gave me this, I went down to the Central Library. I got a printout from the database that gave more than twelve hundred books with the word ‘south’ in the title. Good hunting! Anyway, that word could be a code too, and then you’re no further on. Without the right book, there’s not a hope of breaking the code.”
He folded the paper and gave it back to Hanne, who looked dispirited. He wouldn’t keep it, even though it was only a copy. His years in the secret service had had their effect.
“But since the code itself is so banal, I would suggest you try and track down what it’s based on—search for the book near where you found this piece of paper. You might well stumble upon it. A lot of good police work comes from luck. I wish you plenty of it!”
The two officers sat in silence for a while.
“Look on the bright side, Håkon,” said Hanne eventually. “At least we know we’re onto something. Olsen would hardly have needed a code for writing his defence speeches. So it has to refer to nefarious activities.”
“But what?” Håkon sighed. “Shall we go over everything we’ve got once again?”
An hour later they were both in a considerably better mood. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that they might find the book. And since their last meeting they’d also had confirmation that Olsen had indeed seen his client on the day of the appointment. And that it had not taken place in his office, but in the unlikely and very public venue of the Old Christiania.
“That could of course mean that the meeting was entirely innocent,” said Håkon rather glumly.
“Sure could,” said Hanne, making ready to go.
“Why do you use so many American expressions?”
“I’m an America freak.” She grinned, slightly embarrassed. “I know it’s a bad habit.”
They gulped down the rest of their coffee, and went their separate ways.
Later that afternoon two walkers were conversing on a fallen tree trunk in the wooded hills of Nordmarka just to the north of Oslo. The older of the two was sitting on a plastic bag as protection against the damp. The autumn was in its most typical phase, with the finest drizzle in the air, bordering on mist. Visibility was poor, but they hadn’t come out to enjoy the view. One of them tossed a stone into the smooth surface of the forest lake, and they sat in silence watching the circular ripples spread out with the beauty of natural phenomena until the water was totally still again.
“Will the organisation collapse now?”
It was the younger one, a man in his thirties, who put the question. His voice was tightly controlled. He was tense, and it showed, despite the fact that he was trying to appear relaxed.
“No, it’ll be fine,” the older man reassured him. “There’s a good solid structure in place. We’ve just hacked off one branch. Pity, in a way, because it was profitable. But it had to be done. There’s too much at stake.”
He threw another stone, with greater force this time, as if to emphasise his point.
“Well, the truth is,” the younger man ventured, “it’s been solid till now, we’ve always been careful, and the police have never got anywhere near us. But two murders are in a different league from our previous activities. However greedy Olsen may have been, I don’t see why we couldn’t simply have paid him off. Hell, it’s given me the jitters!”
The older man got up and stood in front of him. He looked all around, to make sure they were alone. The mist had thickened, and visibility was down to about twenty or thirty metres. There was no one within that radius.
“Now see here,” he hissed. “We’ve always been fully aware of the risks of this business. But we have to pull off a few more operations, so it doesn’t look as if there’s a connection between the supply of drugs and the murders. Then we’ll get out while the going’s good. But that means you’ll have to keep a cool head and not let us down in the next few months. Because you’re the one with the contacts.
“But we have a little spot of bother that might blow up in our faces,” he continued. “Han van der Kerch. How much does he know?”
“Nothing, basically. He knows Roger in Sagene. Not much apart from that. But he’s been part of the team for a year or two now, so he may have picked up a few bits and pieces. He can’t have any knowledge of me. I haven’t been as incredibly stupid as Hansy was, letting one of the runners into our secrets. I’ve stuck to the codes and written messages.”
“All the same, he might be a problem,” the older man persisted. “Your problem.”
He lapsed into a meaningful silence without shifting his gaze from his companion. It was a threatening posture, with one leg on the tree trunk and the other firmly on the ground right in front of the younger man.
“There’s something else you ought to remember. You’re the only one who knows about me, now that Hansy has kicked the bucket. None of the boys lower down in the organisation is aware of my existence. Only you. That makes you rather vulnerable, my friend.”
It was an absolutely blatant threat. The younger man stood up and put his face right up close to the other.
“That goes for you too,” he said coldly.
SUNDAY 11 OCTOBER
Hanne Wilhelmsen had the same re
lationship with the police force that in her more romantic moments she imagined a fisherman had with the sea. She was indissolubly bound to the police, and couldn’t envisage doing anything else. When she chose to go to police college at the age of twenty, she made a decisive break with the deep-rooted academic traditions of her family. It had been a protest against her professorial parents and thoroughly middle-class background. Her choice of lifestyle was met with deafening silence from the family, apart from a nervous clearing of the throat by her mother at one Sunday lunch. But they seemed to have accepted it with equanimity. Now she was a sort of mascot for them all, the one who had the most entertaining stories at Christmas. It was through her that the family could imagine they were keeping in touch with real life, and she loved her job.
At the same time she feared it. She had begun to notice what was happening to her soul as a result of this daily contact with murder, rape, violence, and abuse. It clung to her like a wet sheet. Even though she had got into the way of taking a shower when she came home from work, she sometimes thought the smell of death stuck fast, like the smell of fish guts on the hands of fishermen. And just as she imagined fishermen scanning the waters for direct or indirect signs of the presence of fish—gulls gathering, schools of whales hunting—almost as a reflex in their bones after generations at sea, that was how she let her subconscious roam over all her cases simultaneously. There was no information that didn’t lead somewhere. The danger lay in the ever-present problem of overwork. Crime in Oslo was growing at a faster rate than the money allocated to police recruitment in the annual budget.